In the last few months, hateful attitudes towards Chinese people have spiked. It doesn’t take a genius to pinpoint why. When an outbreak of Coronavirus, now known as COVID-19, was first reported in December in China’s Wuhan province, fearmongers immediately took to social media to point fingers at the entire Chinese community. A (now debunked) viral tweet accusing Chinese citizens of eating “bat soup” added fire to the hellscape, and calls for deportation and quarantine of Chinese folks have trended on and off ever since. On Fox News, Tucker Carlson has called the virus proof that “diversity is not our strength.”
Then there’s the response from the U.S. government. Members of Congress, President Trump’s administration, and Trump himself have taken to giving the disease racist nicknames. Trump has referred to it as “the Chinese Virus” in tweets and press conferences, and other Republican leaders and commentators have called it the “Wuhan virus” and even “Kung Flu.”
Despite many people’s attempts to correct President Trump on his language, he has refused to do so. When ABC News reporter Cecilia Vega asked Trump why he insists on using the name (even though UNESCO and the WHO have both stated viruses have no nationality) he claimed “it’s not racist at all” and that he just wanted to be “accurate” about where COVID-19 originated. The White House even claimed that those taking issue with the pointed references to China were “trying to divide us.”
But there’s a good reason why only those on the right see a political advantage in pointing fingers at specific countries and ethnic groups. Doing so absolves the Trump administration of responsibility for their fumbling initial response to the outbreak, and is all of a piece with Trump’s nativist, xenophobic brand of governance.
The racist reception of COVID-19 isn’t surprising, or even unprecedented. It feeds into long-held stereotypes about Asian Americans and other ethnic groups. As far back as the late 19th century, public health officials in the U.S. were describing Chinese Americans as disease-ridden and dirty. Other viral outbreaks have been met with xenophobia — the dislike of and prejudice against other countries. During the Ebola crisis in 2014, similar anti-Black sentiments comparing West Africans to animals proliferated.
